Social Media and Steganography: Use, Risks and Current Status

Abstract

Steganography or data hiding is used to protect the privacy of information in the transit; it has been observed that the information that flows through Online Social Networks (OSN) is very much unsafe. Therefore, people hesitate to communicate their sensitive data on social media.. Most of the information on the online social network is not useful to users and appears to disregard such details. People’s actions provided a possibility for digital Steganography through the Internet.. TCPIP covert channels were used for steganography until the last decade. People began to utilize social media as a covert conduit to communicate hidden messages to targeted users as social media grew in popularity. There are numerous Online Social Networks accessible nowadays, ranging from Facebook to the more contemporary Twitter and Instagram. All of them may be utilized as covert channels without the general public noticing. The primary characteristic of steganography is the protection of information privacy; nonetheless, it has been utilized more for illicit message transmission, which is a source of concern. To make matters worse, adversaries are using steganalysis techniques to mess with the concealed data. In this article, we examine the different social media steganography techniques, such as those used on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter, as well as the difficulties that these approaches raise. The positive and negative consequences of social media, as well as its current state, are discussed in this study. This paper discusses how the performances of Steganography methods may be assessed using the Entropy value of the Stego object. A look of the three features of steganography. It has been given with undetectability, robustness, and payload capacity. Finally, the paper’s concept’s future scope is explored.

Keywords

• Steganography
• social media
• cyber stalking
• cyber bullying
• steganalysis
• OSN